Â
 This 1975
CHUCK JONES animated telling of
RUDYARD KIPLING's short story from THE JUNGLE BOOK features two villains capable of sending any child into retreat. The husband and wife tag-team terror strikers were named Nag and Nagaina and they were scary as hell cobras. With piercing eyes and hissing voices, they planned a heinous home invasion that, if successful, would leave a family of three dead. Of course all such plans are laid to waste as each of them are disposed of by the adorable and heroic mongoose named Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.
INDELIBLE SCENE(S):
- Rikki stomps sand snake Karait
- Nag's late night siege of the bathroom
- Terror in the gazebo
- The Rickster uses Nagaina's egg as bait
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They used to round us up in elementary school and show this once a year on the "big screen". Why, I ask you? What were they trying to teach us???
I saw this several times a long time ago on TV. Yes, it's scary. Whoever drew the cobras knew what they were doing, even though real cobras don't show their hood all the time. What was real scary was the creaking, hissy voices they spoke in.
I just watched this again on youtube. I also saw it in elementary school. I think I'm more traumatized now than I was then.
I refuse to believe I was the only sensitive young thing who ever felt sorry for Nag and Nagaina. After all, they were only doing what a cobra does, and it wasn't their fault they weren't furry and cute. Then again, I've always had a perverse affinity for the Destined-to-Lose in this world.
humiliatingly late to the party on this one as well; but i was only directed to Kindertrauma a week ago, so mea culpa. i hope the fact that i'm already on page 182 stands me in good stead.
holy shit, Rikki Tikki Tavi. i waited for it every year, along with a couple of animated specials i could have sworn were also done by Chuck Jones but for which i can't find corroboration online: The Little Mermaid (in which she dies and turns to seafoam at the end) and one about a seal that had the most horrific segment in which baby seals were clubbed to death by fur harvesters. yeah, I WAITED FOR THESE THINGS EVERY YEAR. they upset me and made me cry and i absolutely adored them. they filled some weird void in my life, one that's still there.
i'm so grateful there were– and hopefully still are– people out there who still understand children's need for terror and poignancy. we still need our Grimms. they're an incredibly important aspect of childhood, of learning to deal with a sometimes cruel and incomprehensible world. in many ways, horror taught me how to feel, as nothing else ever did.
i love your site. so many of the films and other things you talk about here helped make so many of us into good and decent people– not despite the fact that we loved and feared these things, but precisely because of it.
you are my new favourites. MWAH. <3